1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a substrate heat treatment apparatus, a heat treatment method, and a computer readable storage medium storing a program when causing a computer to execute the heat treatment method.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a photolithography process in a manufacturing process of a semiconductor device, for example, a resist coating treatment of applying a resist solution, for example, onto a wafer, a heat treatment of drying the resist solution (pre-baking), exposure processing of exposing the resist film to a predetermined pattern, a heat treatment of accelerating chemical reaction in the resist film after the exposure (post-exposure baking treatment), a developing treatment of developing the exposed resist film, a heat treatment of heating the wafer after the developing treatment (post baking), and so on are performed in order, to thereby form a predetermined resist pattern on the wafer.
A series of the above-described wafer treatments is performed in a coating and developing treatment system incorporating a resist coating apparatus for performing the resist coating treatment, a developing treatment apparatus for performing the developing treatment, heat treatment apparatuses for performing the above-described various kinds of heat treatments, a transfer unit for performing transfer of the wafer between the treatment apparatuses and so on.
A plurality of the above-described heat treatment apparatuses are installed for each predetermined object in the coating and developing treatment system in order to improve the throughput, so that the plurality of heat treatment apparatuses are used to heat-treat a plurality of substrates in parallel during the same time (Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2001-85323).
However, where a plurality of wafers are treated in parallel by the plurality of heat treatment apparatuses as described above, there are individual differences between the heat treatment apparatuses, thus causing variation in thermal history of the wafer depending on the heat treatment apparatus for treatment. In addition, the transfer route and the transfer time of the wafer vary depending on the installation position of each heat treatment apparatus, thus also causing a difference in total thermal history of the wafer. The thermal history affects the dimension of the finally formed resist pattern and may cause variation in the dimension of the resist pattern among the wafers in the case of the above-described parallel treatment.